Take Me By the Hand
by Arrhythmic Song
Summary: [YoujixNatsuo] The story of the Zero boys when they were younger, how they met, how they got to know each other... and how they grew into who they are today.
1. Youji

Take Me By the Hand

* * *

Author's Note: Heyyy. First Loveless fic... this features the Zero boys, Natsuo and Youji. Basically, it's the story of when they were younger, how they met, how they got to know each other... and how they grew into the sadistically lovable boys they are today. I love them, and I love the series Loveless... so R&R if you read this! It's multi-chapter... so there'll be more coming. 

Disclaimer: Loveless and its related characters do not belong to me: they belong to the ever-talented and incredible Kouga Yun. We bow at her feet.

* * *

Youji and Natsuo had first met when they were younger. Youji had been nine, and five years later meeting Natsuo was one of the best memories of his younger days. He remembered Nagisa-sensei, of course, and he remembered smiles and a woman who had taken care of him for a while, and he remember that Nagisa-sensei had told him to hurt her. And Nagisa-sensei had to be obeyed, so he gave her a hug, one last hug, and then he left her nailed to the wall. 

It was his first real experience with cruelty, cruelty to another living human, beyond frying ants with magnifying glasses or pulling the wings off flies. Those were unspeaking little creatures – they had no voice, nothing to articulate their pain with. The woman who had raised him had a voice. She had cried and asked him why. And he had told her he was sorry, so sorry, but he had not used Nagisa-sensei as an excuse. He had called an ambulance before he went, though, and hid from Nagisa-sensei till he saw he woman – Mama – being cared for in good hands. Nagisa-sensei had been very angry. She had slapped him, said that he was only a Sacrifice. And Sacrifices were disposable, and if he ever defied her again he would be destroyed, because he was Zero, he was _her _creation.

At that point, he hadn't really cared. And then she had taken Youji to a little room, with a desk, and a bed, and sitting cross-legged on the bed was another boy in an oversized black shirt and white shorts, with long, curling red hair and bright jade eyes. Nagisa-sensei smiled prettily and flounced over t the other boy. 'Natsuo! Meet Youji! He'll be your Sacrifice from today on, and he'll stay here with you from now onwards, okay?' She guided Youji over to the bed and sat him down.

Natsuo nodded. 'Yes, Nagisa-sensei.'

D 

'She's alright, I guess,' Youji shrugged. Natsuo seemed younger than he did, somehow, even if they were probably the same age, created at the same time as each other by Nagisa-sensei. And maybe, just maybe, that's why he felt like he knew Natsuo, from some time before this meeting. Maybsat silently for several minutes, taking in each other and taking the measure of each other. Youji was wary – Nagisa-sensei was not above hurting him, he was not above hurting others. This Natsuo might be the same, even if he was Youji's _sentouki_.

But Youji's suspicions lasted only as long as it took for Natsuo to turn, grab a teddy bear that had been sitting at the side of the bed and offer it to Youji with a disarming smile. 'Here, you can have my bear.'

Youji took it without comment. It was one-eyed, soft and floppy, proof of long use, but careful, clumsy stitches across a rip told him Natsuo had treasured it deeply. Youji cuddled it for a moment, then tentatively held it back out to Natsuo. 'Let's share, shall we?'

Natsuo took it and smiled in return. 'Thank you, Youji.'

'Do you have the birthmark?' Youji asked abruptly. 'The one that says '0'.'

'Mm!' Natsuo answered enthusiastically, turning to pull his shirt up, displaying the black-printed number on the small of his back, a bare few inches above his tail, the pants riding low on his hips. Youji reached out, traced the mark with a fingernail. Natsuo quivered at the touch and purred lightly before turning to Youji. 'You have the birthmark too, ne, Youji?'

'of course,' Youji replied, turning so his back faced Natsuo. Natsuo crept closer and lifted the shirt, letting his eyes fall on the name, stark against Youji's paler skin. He leaned forward to get a closer look – it was difficult to see his own birthmark, since he needed to get a mirror and twist in all kinds of funny ways. Youji smelt nice, Natsuo realized. Warm. Young. Soft. He breathed in deeply again, exhaled softly against the skin.

Youji yelped and Natsuo backed away. 'Gomen, Youji! I – I didn't mean –'

'It's alright, Natsuo,' Youji hurriedly said, reaching out a hand to rest it against Natsuo's arm. 'You just surprised me, that's all.'

'Okay then,' Natsuo replied, moving closer again. When Youji didn't object, he moved even closer, finally putting his head down on Youji's lap. Youji didn't object, threading fingers through Natsuo's hair softly. It felt nice, the strands sifting through his hands lazily.

Natsuo smiled up at Youji. 'Ne, Youji. We'll be Sacrifice and _sentouki_ forever, ne? Forever and ever.'

'Why the question?' Youji asked curiously, sensing the sudden – if subtle tension – that had suffused Natsuo's small, lithe body.

'Nagisa-sensei said... she said that Sacrifices were only there to stop us _sentouki_ from getting hurt too bad. If my first Sacrifice died, she'd just get me another,' Natsuo said quietly. 'And... and I think I don't want another Sacrifice. Just Youji.'

Youji grinned on impulse, leaning down to press a soft kiss to Natsuo's forehead. 'I promise, Natsuo. We'll be together forever and ever, no matter what Nagisa-sensei says.'

'That's good,' Natsuo murmured decisively. 'I don't really like Nagisa-sensei, sometimes.'

'She's alright, I guess,' Youji shrugged. Natsuo seemed younger than he did, somehow, even if they were probably the same age, created at the same time as each other by Nagisa-sensei. And maybe, just maybe, that's why he felt like he knew Natsuo, from some time before this meeting. Maybe that's why he felt the urge to protect Natsuo as an instinct, to take the hurt for him even if both of them would never know pain. Natsuo was... innocent, maybe. 'Did you always live with Nagisa-sensei?'

'Yes,' Natsuo answered hesitantly. 'She can be nice, but sometimes she can be quite angry. Like whenever she met this person called Ritsu-sensei. Nagisa-sensei is okay, but Ritsu-sensei is scary, He treated me like I was dirt, and when he talked to Nagisa-sensei, he called me her 'experiment'. There was a little boy with him, and he – he just didn't look happy. So I guess things could be worse.'

Youji figured. Nagisa-sensei would have protected her favourite _sentouki_ more than her Sacrifices – and Youji wasn't just talking about the physical sense. After all, Natsuo was the first of the prized Zero Fighters, even though Nagisa-sensei kept hinting that there were more in the works.

But still...

'Natsuo? Can I ask you something?'

'Youji can ask me anything. He's my Sacrifice.'

'Have... have you ever hurt anyone?' It seemed unlikely.

'Yeah.' The admission was neither proud, nor was it ashamed – merely a statement of fact. 'Nagisa-sensei made me fight a lot of other _sentouki_. She told me to fight to kill, because she said that otherwise they'd kill me. And I couldn't let myself be killed, or else I would never have met Youji. So I killed them all, one by one at first, and then two by two, and then three by three, and then they were all dead, and Nagisa-sensei said I did well. Did I, Youji?'

Youji was stunned, but he recovered quickly. _To kill a person... to kill so many, so soon, so carelessly... what is he? _The answer followed immediately. _He's my sentouki. _'Of course, Natsuo.'

Natsuo smiled sleepily and yawned before replying to Youji. 'A lot of them screamed, though. When I cut them or something. Is that what it means to feel pain, Youji?'

'I wouldn't know,' he answered. 'I'm Zero too.'

'Yes,' Natsuo said thoughtfully, gazing up at Youji, playing with a strand of turquoise hair. 'Doesn't it make you curious, sometimes, though?'

'Sometimes,' Youji admitted. 'But I wouldn't care for it. Pain doesn't seem to be a good thing, if it makes people cry.'

'I guess,' Natsuo murmured, more to himself than Youji. 'But Ritsu-sensei was saying something to Nagisa-sensei, about why we would fail eventually. He said that pain was a warning. It was an indicator that you were still alive. Does that mean we're not alive, Youji?'

'I don't know,' Youji answered, confusion flashing through his mind. Why was Natsuo bringing all this up? He had never thought about any of this before. He had never really cared that he would hold hot stuff and his skin would blister, or that he would spend too long in the sun and his skin would start to peel, and he never felt any of it. It had never mattered. In fact, it still didn't. All that mattered... 'All that matters is that we're together now.'

Natsuo's smile to him was radiant. 'Mmhmm,' he agreed, snuggling even closer, if that were possible. Youji eased Natsuo off his lap, lying down beside his red-haired _sentouki_. Natsuo's arm snuck over him instinctively, the other hand reaching to find Youji's.

'That's all that matters,' he whispered again. Natsuo said nothing, pressing closer in response, their fingers interlacing.

* * *

Author's Note: Feedback is vital to an author's survival. Review! 


	2. Natsuo

Take Me By the Hand

* * *

Author's Note: Heyyy... back with the second chapter now, and this time it's Natsuo's turn to relate his childhood.Thanks for reading: and don't forget to review later!

Disclaimer: LOVELESS characters are copyright Kouga Yun.

* * *

Part Two: Natsuo

* * *

As far back as Natsuo could remember, there had been fighting. It happened around him, about him, because of him. He remembered everything from the moment he woke in the false womb, immersed in the stimulated amniotic fluid Nagisa-sensei had kept him in – he didn't know if it was some anomaly in the procedure or other – apparently Youji had not. Or Youji had his memories tampered with, each of these were equally possible as Nagisa-sensei tampered with – trying to improve – her Zero series. 

Nagisa-sensei... the first words she'd said to him had been 'My _sentouki_,' said in a tone of beautiful satisfaction with a disturbingly beatific smile across her face, her turquoise-blue hair scented with jasmine, and her alabaster hands reaching out for him, the long sleeves and the childish dress. 'Fighter,' she breathed, and stroked his cheek.

Of course, Nagisa-sensei had no real satisfaction in children, merely in the survival of this one of her test subjects, out of all the other failures. She had given him away to another woman to raise, a worker in her labs, dismissing Natsuo as another squalling brat the way she had summarily dismissed Youji – at least, until Natsuo was well-developed enough physically, grown enough to fight for her purposes.

So Natsuo had gone to that foster-family. And his surrogate mother had fought with her husband constantly, a husband who blamed her for being barren – though it was never clear who exactly was the one truly at fault – and viewed Natsuo as nothing more than a child picked up to fill their void, like one would buy a puppy at the store. It had been inevitable, probably, from Natsuo's distinctive colouring – he looked nothing like either one of them, both dark haired and dark eyed. And Natsuo had been embroiled in those fights, as a cause, as a participant, and they had fought around and about him and over him and day in day out his ears had been filled with the sounds of shouting and screaming, tears and recriminations.

Eventually, his foster mother had become a broken woman. The soft brown eyes that Natsuo remembered had blurred away, misting over to keep the world and its cruelties at bay, especially those of the man whose love for her had turned to ashes and dust. And it was all the more cruel for what they had once shared before the lack of a child and the appearance of Natsuo had torn them apart, piece by piece. Natsuo remembered the way she had forgotten to cry at night, and the blank realization in her eyes when she finally reconciled her inner soul to the abuse, and eventually she no longer tried to fight back.

And it seeped in, really – he learned from all this, learned that even the most resilient person can be torn down by the simple repetition of sheer, soul-sucking _pain_. It was in his subconscious before he could even put a word to that nameless instinct of _what to do to hurt someone else. _Impossible to say that what happens in your early years does not condition you to think a certain way. Natsuo knew that Soubi was trained by Ritsu-sensei to fight and obey since young, and even though Nagisa-sensei insisted that genetics are the be-all-and-end-all of a Fighter-Sacrifice training programme, Natsuo could not believe that Nagisa-sensei failed to understand the significance of a child's upbringing, hadn't arranged for him to be brought up in that kind of foster-home.

But then again, she might not have cared. It could of course be a coincidence that his childhood had been so suited to his later career as a _sentouki_ – or was he just reading the events of the past in relation to what he knew of the present, in hindsight?

Maybe, he didn't care either.

Besides, all that was the past. The bittersweet candy, and the tuneless lullabies, the soft, sad looks and the slow, resentful anger, all of it was sharply faded, a mere outline of blue-gray smoke breaking to nothing on the morning breeze. Now was the present, now was Youji and beautiful blue-green hair, now was the present and red flowers blooming in the green field and Youji saying that it fit his colouring, red on green, green on red.

Of course, he would never have been able to have Youji if he hadn't fought for it. He was recalled from his foster-home to the school dormitories earlier than Youji – one or two years, actually, after he and Youji had gotten their timelines sorted out together. By then, of course, Nagisa-sensei had gotten more of her experiments to survive. The Zero weren't her only project, but at that point Yamato and Kouya – those two_ obaasans _– were in their own training too.

So she pitted them against each other, much as dog trainers do, to breed ferocity into the strain. She taught each of them, separately, to fight without mercy, and used Natsuo and another Fighter – Natsuo couldn't remember his name, not anymore, just a nameless face in the many he had killed – as the first of the live demonstrations.

Oh, that battle had been intense, but Natsuo had won, because he had unnerved the rest, his disturbing resistance to any kind of pain, ignoring the blood that had trickled down his _armslegsbackface_ – merely fighting, only winning. And it was obvious from that moment on that Natsuo was possibly strongest of them, then.

And then it was a world of horror, from then on, as they sabotaged Natsuo in a million and one petty ways – sloshing cold water over his bed, for instance – he didn't feel the cold, but it usually made him sick in the end, and that was bad, because Nagisa-sensei detested physical infirmity. Or putting pins in his shoe, so he would walk around all day seeping blood, and his shoe would be soaked in it, and he'd feel a little lightheaded by the time he found out – petty annoyances, but annoyances all the same.

Of course, that had all stopped when Youji showed up.

They would be killed if they didn't fight, and because of that they all fought desperately. And because they fought desperately, they killed one another. It was an intense, vicious cycle, and Nagisa-sensei delighted to see it. There were other, prototype-Zero, but they were only half what Natsuo was, even if they still retained their painlessness. Generally Natsuo bled them dry – even the Zero would die if blood loss was severe enough. And he still remembered their fragile forms, lying in a pool of blood – there was a _lot _of blood in the body, actually – paper dolls constructed from paper skin, so easily torn to pieces.

Natsuo had fought, and day by day the opponents dwindled. And when there were only eight of them left, most of the others prototype-Zero too. And that was when Nagisa-sensei had dropped the bomb.

There was a Sacrifice waiting for the survivor.

It was a Fighter's instinct to need a Sacrifice, for reasons that had nothing to do with battle. In battle Sacrifices took the damage for a Fighter, even if the fundamental lesson for a _sentouki _was to protect the Sacrifice. It was a two-way relationship, after all. But even more than that, outside of a battle the Fighter felt the need for a Sacrifice, to keep him grounded, safe, secure. That odd feeling, that longing had its roots in something that no one had been able to explain. The lure of a Sacrifice for them, who had been fighting a psychological war of attrition with each other, was indescribable at that point.

And it was then that the fights began to intensify, to the immense satisfaction of Nagisa-sensei, and it was then that Natsuo learned the ways of fighting physical, that had so disturbed Soubi when he and Youji had fought Beloved's _sentouki_. Soubi had told them to use spells, that winning needed elegance. Natsuo didn't believe that. He took several of them down outside of the actual battle system – in a fistfight, then a quick knife to the belly or the heart, or the jugular vein, to see the blood spurt forward.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and he _was, _by the end,highly inventive in the ways he killed people.

And then he had killed the last one. Nagisa-sensei had praised him, fondled him, fussed over him, and dressed his wounds personally, because he was her success, he was the first of the battle-trained Zero. Later he learned that she'd taken another approach with Yamato and Kouya, but that wasn't the point, was it? She had taken him aside and told him lots of things, about the Sacrifice-Fighter bond, and how since he was Zero, without that unique name, he had no need for a unique Sacrifice, that he was to fight to win, and never mind if the Sacrifice was lost. She could always get him another...

He didn't listen to much of it, but it had made him afraid, since he'd instinctively rejected the idea of bonding to more than one Sacrifice, even if he wasn't natural-born. Whether genetically engineered or natural, it was the main characteristic of a Fighter – to love the Sacrifice to the exclusion of everyone else.

He had known this even before he had seen Youji, and when he saw Youji, that was the end and the beginning and all the rest in between, because he loved Youji even before they had ever met, and Youji was perfect, from the minute Natsuo set eyes on him.

And the best thing was that Youji loved him too.

* * *

Author's Note: Hope you liked! R&R! 


	3. Possessive Revenge

Take Me By the Hand

Part Three: Possessive Revenge

* * *

Author's Note: I'm sorry for the long break in between chapters: I can only plead a bad block. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy this anyway! The action begins, and the darker side of the Zero begins to surface from here onwards: their fascination with pain and cruelty. And at the same time, a warmer, more touching side: their fascination with each other.

* * *

'Natsuo? What's this?' Youji asked, cocking his head curiously.

'Hmm?' Natsuo asked, sitting up lazily in bed. Two weeks into being together, and they were still discovering things about each other. Youji didn't like drinking cold milk, and Youji always slept on his left side, so Natsuo always warmed the milk and slept on his right, so he could face Youji. Natsuo didn't like eating vegetables and liked taking hot baths, so Youji ate half and made Natsuo eat the rest, and didn't use all the hot water or invited Natsuo to share the bathtub with him.

Youji was surprised that he liked it, but he did. It was fun learning to compromise with whatever Natsuo wanted, and it was coming naturally to him, without question and without the slightest trace of difficulty. There was no hesitation in the way they adapted to suit each other, the way they slipped into living together like they had done it for years instead of a mere fourteen days.

And there was nothing to it, nothing besides his wish to find out more about Natsuo, so that he could be closer to the other boy, and Youji knew, without asking and without words, that it was reciprocated by Natsuo too. Youji wanted to know everything about the beautiful creature who was suddenly his, this boy with the reddish rust hair and the wonderful green eyes, and the pale, pale skin that made Natsuo look so wonderful and exotic.

So it came to pass that Natsuo was just lying on the bed and doing nothing in particular, and Youji had gone to get a glass of water for the both of them and as he was returning to the bed he'd noticed the weird jagged scar on the sole of Natsuo's foot, and that was a weird place to get cut, wasn't it, even in a fight?

'Ahh, it's from that time when the other students were trying to get me,' Natsuo answered, pulling his foot up with an amazing flexibility to stare at the jagged cut.

'What?' Youji asked, sitting down beside Natsuo and reaching out a finger to trace the scar with a gentle finger. 'What do you mean?'

'Before you came,' Natsuo answered nonchalantly; setting his foot down and letting his head fall into Youji's lap. 'The other students didn't like me very much. They played all kinds of pranks. They put glass in my shoe and I didn't realize it, cause it went straight in but it didn't hurt.'

The sudden flare of protective anger surprised even Youji himself with its intensity, and for a moment he saw red, red mist, angry and searching for a target for it, a target that he could fall upon and rend and tear and kill and hurt, hurt, hurt it so badly – But there was only Natsuo in the room, Natsuo who was _his_, and how dare they touch him and hurt him that way –

'Youji,' and Natsuo voice brought him back to reality. 'Youji? Are you alright?'

Youji blinked the red filming from his eyes, twining his arms around Natsuo and bringing him down to the bed. 'Mine,' he whispered quietly into Natsuo's ears. 'They hurt you, Natsuo.'

'No, they didn't,' Natsuo corrected gently. 'We don't feel pain, remember?'

That doesn't matter, Youji wanted to tell him. Natsuo is his, every inch of Natsuo, just like Youji belongs to his _sentouki_, and therefore Natsuo's blood and Natsuo's flesh is his _property_, his _possessions_ – how dare they shed it, how dare they cut that tender, young skin? Instead, Youji ran fingers over Natsuo's cat ears – soft like crushed velvet, and tender under his searching fingers – and commanded, 'Show me, your scars. Show me.'

Natsuo complied, tugging off the shirt first, a fluid, graceful movement, pointing out the scars on his skin and explaining to Youji how he got each one, stripping as he went. This one from a _sentouki_ fight, this one from someone's nails scratching him, this one from someone coming at him with a knife, this one also from a _sentouki_ fight... Youji listened and his urge to hurt something grew stronger and stronger, his urge to find the people who did this and make them pay the price for laying a finger on something that belonged so solely to Youji and Youji alone.

But that would have to wait. Instead, Youji leaned in and began to mark Natsuo instead, on the intimate places – the inside of Natsuo's elbow, his wrist, then bolder, when Natsuo shuddered in pleasure as the red marks bloomed on his pale skin. A taut, brown nipple, and Natsuo's body jerked when Youji closed his teeth around it. Youji smiled and licked it a little before doing the same to the other one. He trailed downwards, marked Natsuo's inner thighs, a trail of small red nips left by sharp teeth as Natsuo made small; mewling noises and fisted his hands in Youji's hair.

To any other observer it would have looked sexual; looking back at that moment from their current age, it was. They were precocious little brats, after all. But at that moment, it wasn't. At that moment the pleasure that surged through Youji and Natsuo and formed an iron bond was the pleasure of belonging to each other, the pleasure of being bitten and the pleasure of pleasure itself, self-contained and existing for no reason but to exist. And it was wanting more of that sensation – that sheer ownership – that Youji threw himself back on the bed and invited Natsuo to do the same to him.

Natsuo's bites were harsher than Youji – they went deeper, those vicious little fangs sinking in, but Youji merely watched the blood rise and watched Natsuo moving against him. He felt the pressure but certainly no pain, and as a result there was nothing but that pleasure that flowed through the both of them, leaping from their bodies like stray electrons and ionizing the air around them in a charged cloud, their own protective little aura. A world belonging only to the two of them, a haze that shielded them from everyone else.

When Natsuo was done he curled up beside Youji, who tugged up the blankets around them before leaning in to share a bloodstained kiss – not because a kiss was what other people did, what lovers did, but because they wanted to taste it, each other's blood in each other's mouths. Youji curled arms around Natsuo and murmured, 'We supposed to always be polite, ne, Natsuo?'

Natsuo pricked his ears – that was one of Nagisa-sensei's teachings, and Youji had never shown much interest in whatever Nagisa-sensei said. 'Mm, yes?' he replied, making it sound more like a question as he waited for Youji to reveal what he had in mind.

Youji smiled then, a small secret smile that turned lavender eyes hard, like amethyst gemstones. 'So... about the people who hurt you, Natsuo. We should return the favor, ne?' And if Youji's eyes were like darkened quartz, Natsuo's eyes turned to deep, viridian emeralds as understanding sank in.

'Of course, Youji.' And he shuddered lightly in Youji's arms; the thought sending small sparks up his spine.

* * *

They got their first chance sooner than they expected to have it. It was one of the other Sacrifice-_sentouki_ pairs, the female Fighter several years older than them, and obviously jealous of, and disturbed by, Natsuo's strength. She was one of the better of Nagisa's non-Zero Fighters, and yet it was plain to anyone with eyes that Natsuo was strong and growing ever stronger.

Nagisa-sensei had eyes.

They entered from opposite ends of the room, one of Nagisa-sensei's sterile black-and-white battlegrounds, and the sudden tightening of Natsuo's hand around Youji's told him what he needed to know. Here, then, was their first target. They would be... examples.

The Sacrifice (a small boy dressed in nondescript clothing and overshadowed by his _sentouki_) watched Youji – after all, everyone here knew what Natsuo was like now. Fierce, unrelenting, and merciless. But Youji... Youji was the unknown in this battle. The news was all over the school – a young boy with long, turquoise hair and lavender eyes, a delicate facial structure that made him look fey and beautiful. No one knew what he was like beneath the exterior, though – no one had even heard of him before.

That was probably a good thing, though. After all, that would mean this Youji had no combat experience, no idea what it really meant to be a Sacrifice. It was one thing to comprehend it at the conscious mental level, another thing to understand what a Sacrifice had to do in the heat of battle and take it in at the level of the emotions.

And then this Youji looked up with a sharp, vicious grin that showed pointed canines, and a shudder of fear struck him.

'Go ahead, Natsuo,' Youji murmured, smiling from within glazed eyes. His opponents wouldn't hear, but Youji wanted to get this battle started. The look of fear on the other boy's face, when he had locked gazes with Youji... it struck a responsive chord somewhere deep within him. The power to provoke that look, and what it implied about him and Natsuo...

Natsuo grinned back fiercely. 'We declare a spell battle. Do you accept?' His challenge rang loud in the empty room, and the echoes of it resounded with the tones of a battle clarion, wild and strong and unmatched even by the answering call of 'We accept!' from the opposite pair.

Natsuo settled into silent anticipation, waiting for the opponents to make the first move, his grin increasingly feral as he stayed in a ready half-crouch beside Youji, who instinctively knew what Natsuo was trying to do. Natsuo was trying to unnerve their opponents, and it was working.

Finally, they snapped. The girl screamed, 'Burst! May the winds rend and tear their skin!'

Almost snarling in fierce joy, Natsuo made no attempt to defend, merely let her attack happen and watched the red blossom on his skin and Youji's. 'We are Zero, and for trying to hurt us we give your our pain. The hurt we cannot feel is yours to suffer!'

'Defend!' the girl cried out, her Sacrifice turning sheet-white.

'Useless!' Natsuo ground out. 'This pain is born from inside you. There is no defense against your body's betrayal. Restriction!'

The Sacrifice choked out a whimper as the collar-and-chains of a restriction encircled his throat. The Fighter looked like she was about to panic. 'Restriction!' she called, a pitiful counter-attack.

Natsuo laughed. 'Shatter!' he replied, and the attack never reached them. 'You'll need a longer spell than that to catch us,' he murmured. 'Do you feel the pain? Can you feel it creeping up every square inch of your skin? Like an army of red ants setting your nerves on fire with sharp little teeth.'

Her Sacrifice screamed.

Natsuo never gave in, never let up, 'Does it hurt a lot? We wouldn't know, after all. We're Zero. We cannot know what it's like to suffer pain, but you can. Your suffering is our lesson. Show us what it's like to suffer pain, like being pierced by a million hot needles, sinking into your skin. Burning. Searing. Killing you slowly.'

The screaming intensified and continued, one long, endless wail of sheer pain as the restrictions increased. 'No!' the Fighter girl cried out. 'We surrender! Stop this!'

Natsuo turned to Youji, a question in his eyes. Youji twitched and realized he was breathing heavily, and there was an unfamiliar sensation coursing through him – delight. Sheer, real delight at seeing another person suffer, helpless on the ground in the face of the power that Natsuo and him held in tandem.

'Restrict! If they cannot feel pain let them suffer in a world of no sensation. Let their Sacrifice's senses be muffled and may fear grip him!' the sudden sentence, the attack directed solely at Youji – was unexpected, and there was no defense against it. A moment later, there was a collar encircling Youji's neck, and a cry escaped his lips.

There was nothing, all of a sudden. The world was black and silent and Natsuo was nowhere. 'No!' Youji cried, but there was no sound issuing from his lips. _No!_ was the visceral, sudden response to what had just happened – Natsuo's disappearance. No, no, no.

This wasn't true, was it? Youji took a deep, shuddering breath as the events of the last few moments came flooding back. This was a spell battle. They had been attacked, that's why he couldn't see or hear or feel anything. He would stay calm. He retreated inwards, into himself, recalling to when he had first held Natsuo in his arms. There had been an almost audible internal _click_, a recognition, a knowing that Natsuo was there. And nothing had changed. He would know, he would know if Natsuo was truly gone from him, and Natsuo wasn't.

'Natsuo,' he spoke. 'You can hear me, even if I can't hear you. I'm alright. Teach them, Natsuo – teach them what it means to hurt. Teach them what it means to be afraid. Show them how small dark things can creep into them, into their ears and mouths and eyes, and devour them from the inside out and take them slowly.'

And he waited. He waited and was patient because he trusted Natsuo and he knew Natsuo would never fail him, and there was absolutely no chance that this second-rate pair could even think of defeating them.

And then suddenly the waiting was over and his senses were on overload, charged with a blaze of wonderful, silky scented crimson. Natsuo's long hair, and his triumphant little smile as he held Youji in his arms and helped him to stand.

A pair of corpses lay in front of them, and their last screams reverberated with pleasure in Natsuo's ears.

* * *

Author's Note: Review! I will be very much appreciative.


End file.
